Hip-hop Gets Into Election Business

October 11, 2004|By The Hartford Courant

TRENTON, N.J. — After years of rebelling against the Man, the culture wants to have a voice in politics.

When New Jersey's attorney general, Peter Harvey, spoke at a hip-hop summit about voting machines, provisional ballots and the Help America Vote Act, the undercurrent of restless boredom in his audience was almost palpable: another droning politician.

Then Freeway, a glowering, scruffy rapper from Philadelphia, cut to the root of the message when he leaned into the microphone on a table in front of him and said, "We need to make a difference, we need to have somebody in office who will do something for us.

"Holla at your boy," he added, and slouched down in his seat. The assembled teens roared back at him as if he was Paul McCartney at Shea Stadium.

If money talks, hip-hop is shouting this election season.

After 30 years of rebelling against the Man, hip-hop as a culture is intent for the first time this year on helping to choose him by becoming a force in mainstream politics. Voter registration drives, fund-raisers and so-called hip-hop summits are among the tools leaders in the urban-music community are using to mobilize their constituents: young people, often (but not exclusively) of color, who have tended to tune out politics.

"We can vote and we can push people to pay attention to us, or else they'll pay attention to old people and other people who go to the polls," record executive Russell Simmons told high school students at a recent hip-hop summit. The event last month was one of a series sponsored by Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, or HSAN, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group.

For a culture that has purchased its way to pop primacy -- and continues to set a standard for "cool" -- political engagement is the next logical step. Once a street-level form of self-expression in New York's poorest neighborhoods, hip-hop has transcended the poverty of its origins to dominate American culture through music, style and, not least, spending power. Hip-hop's eagerness to acquire high-end automobiles, clothing, electronics and other trappings of wealth has made it a welcome presence in the retail world.

The only thing hip-hop has not yet bought for itself is political access, and power brokers like Simmons, head of Def Jam Records, say it's time to start. Simmons has enlisted rappers and fellow executives to join him in emphasizing, particularly to young people, the importance of becoming a prominent voice in mainstream politics. The message: If consumers of hip-hop culture were a reliable voting bloc, the major political parties could not safely ignore issues important to them -- everything from racial equality to poverty to crime and punishment.

"Right now, they're talking about everything but us," Simmons said in Trenton, where 1,600 screaming teens greeted him like a rock star.

There's no doubt that either presidential candidate would benefit from the backing of voters hip-hop says it has to offer. But hip-hop isn't interested in supporting a candidate -- it wants a candidate that supports hip-hop.

Blacks have mostly voted for Democrats in the years since World War II, and Republicans this year say their rivals take black voters for granted. Yet the issues important to HSAN are more in line with the Democrats' platform than the Republicans', though neither party is ideal.

Hip-hop's leaders recognize that its political ambitions are no small thing. The effect hip-hop culture has on the 2004 election may not be as profound as organizers would like, but they are prepared for persistence.

Damon Dash, head of the music and clothing company Roc-a-Fella Enterprises, said no one took him seriously when he first started in the music business in the 1990s.

"It was me being consistent" and proving himself, he told the audience. "If they're not taking us seriously, they will." *